Wild Thanksgiving

Stir the ingredients together in a rocks glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve.

Highland Cider

One of San Diego’s top bartenders, Anthony Schmidt of Noble Experiment, shares a seasonal recipe. “It’s key to use quality ingredients like Busnel V.S.O.P. calvados, and 12-year-old Highland Park,” says Schmidt.

1 ounce Highland Scotch

1 ounce calvados

1 dash Angostura bitters

1 dash orange bitters

1 brown sugar cube

Metropolitan

Anyone can make a Cosmo; here’s her fashionable colleague.

2 ounces of Absolut Kurant vodka

1/2 ounce Rose’s lime juice

1 ounce cranberry juice

1/2 ounce fresh lime juice

Shake over ice and pour into a chilled martini or rocks glass and garnish with a slice of lime.

From mastering a porcini mushroom risotto to making a handmade lobster ravioli, you’ve slaved tirelessly in the kitchen to become your neighborhood’s Iron Chef. Now it’s time to work on the Saturday evening dinner party’s opening act — the scary unknown of the home bar scene.

Fear not. We’re here to offer tips, tricks and recipes that will make you look like you’ve spent years behind the speed rack at a busy Gaslamp pub — delivering in-and-out martinis, cosmos and the occasional rusty nail.

A lifetime of learning goes into professional bar tending (a small percentage is just keeping up with who is in and who’s out on “Dancing With the Stars”), but to get you ready for your next party, here are five basics that will go a long way toward making great drinks and keeping you out of the weeds (see glossary below).

Belly up to the basics and you, too, can be an ace mixologist

Bar-tending glossary

In the weeds: Describes the unpleasant predicament where you have many thirsty people at your bar and you are woefully behind in making drinks.

Neat: Serving a drink without ice

On the rocks: A cocktail served over ice

Chilled: The process of mixing the ingredients in an ice-filled shaker and straining only the liquid into the glass to serve.

Float: The practice of slowly pouring a small amount of a liquor on top of a completed cocktail. Often this is used for both color and flavor.

Muddle: Mashing ingredients together (i.e., mint and sugar in a mojito) to release essential oils and fragrances from herbs or fruit.

Eight-six or Eighty-sixed: To stop serving or eliminate; as in “Eighty-six the vodka gimlets, I’m out of lime juice.”

Fruit it up

Cutting lemon peel and orange slices like a pro is simply a matter of a little technique paired with practice. The same goes for lemon and lime wedges — the basics (and often most-overlooked) of any bar setup. To cut lime wedges, start with a sharp knife; otherwise you’re going to be juicing it, not cutting it. Slice the lime in half lengthwise. Lay the cut halves down and halve them again. Voilà! You have wedges at the ready. Other garnishes beyond olives and onions include cucumber, pineapple or some exotic fruit.

To work in a high-end bar, you need to know how and when to use 20-plus types of glasses, from the straightforward (beer mug or champagne flute) to the more obscure (cordial or collins glass). At home, you can make it all work with just three types of glasses:white wine glass, red wine glass and rocks glass

Nothing finishes the flavor of a cocktail more than the right marriage of all ingredients. Here is one bartender’s secret to mixing: Shake the cloudy drinks (cream based and sour based cocktails) and stir the clear drinks. Lastly, do nothing with the carbonated drinks; you’ll only try shaking a vodka tonic once before you have to change wardrobe.

Beyond the salt

Salting the rim of a margarita glass is old, old school, but how about adding a little color (reds, greens, blues) and texture (sugar, pepper or a spice mix) to the rim of a mojito, cosmo or even a bloody mary? You can buy as many as 20 flavors at stirrings.com or create your own.

One thing to get right: the pour.

When you have guests for dinner, there is an understanding that you’ll be serving good food, safely prepared. The same goes for the cocktails. That means the amount of alcohol in the glass should not be a surprise. Overpouring is never a good idea, for the good of the party, your furniture or the guests’ drive home. Most cocktails call for alcohol in increments of a shot. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use a shot glass (a jigger) and measure it out. It’s safe and sound but may not deliver the needed “Cocktail” (the movie) flair. Here’s another option: A few days ahead, get some speed pourers from the local Smart&Final ($6.49 for a lifetime supply of 12), take an empty 750-milliliter bottle, fill it with water and begin to practice the timing needed to pour a perfect shot.

1) Begin with the pourer near the rim of a glass or plastic cup and your finger over the little air hole.

2) Quickly flip the bottle so it’s upside down and vertical, then release your finger from the hole above the spout, pouring while counting “one-tequila; two-tequila.”

3) Replace your finger over the air hole and the pour will almost stop.

4) Just as quickly, bring the base of the bottle back down to the countertop

Pour the contents into a shot glass and see how close you were to filling it.

Adjust your timing, wrist-snap and repeat.

This method of quickly turning the bottle upside down and releasing your finger will magically delay the pouring of the liquor long enough for you to hit the target without a spill (after a little practice of course).

If you’re a little confused by this, head down to a local pub and observe the bar staff at work. You won’t see them tentatively pouring from a horizontal bottle — it’s all vertical, all the time.

Robert York, U-T director of photography and sports executive editor, spent a lot of his college years in bars — as a bartender.